🚪 Smart Gate is Smart

So my GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) hits again. This time, it is yet another pedal, but a quite important one I should say. I have acquired the MXR Smart Gate M135; in simpler terms, a noise gate pedal. 🚪

Bought 2nd hand at $70, condition 9.5/10 (a little dusty that's all).

This is my first MXR pedal, and it sure won't be my last, because MXR pedals are smaller and classier than the Boss pedals. In the future I'll probably switch out my Boss pedals but those will do for now. So a noise gate is essential to me, for the fact that I got 2 dirty pedals and they sure make lots of noise, or rather, excess noise. Some might argue this isn't the best noise gate out there (Boss NS-2 and ISP Decimator are close rivals), but based on the simple fact that Slash uses it, it is then the best to me. Being a rock player using a Telecaster, the single coil hum plus the extra fuzz from the distortion pedal makes my rig really noisy. Although I am sacrificing a little bit of sustain when I turn on the noise gate, it is still better than having the fuzz. Furthermore, more sustain can be achieved by using other pedals like the CS-3. 🎵

OK, moving on, in the picture, see that little black circular rubber below the pedal? That's the sweetest dream and the worst nightmare when owning an MXR pedal. They call it the knob cover, or in some cases, the knob condom, but we'll keep things clean here. So knob cover, its purpose is to cover the knob so that on stage, guitarists can use their feet to turn the knob instead of bending over to do it. The knob itself is too slippery to turn using the feet. Handy little trick right? Wait till you wanna take it out. You simply cannot remove the cover without first removing the knob from the pedal. I don't understand why MXR gotta make it so tight but with a just a huge amount of strength, and a little brainwork, it does come off. Well, I put mine on so as not to lose it (I don't really care about how "ugly" it looks cause honestly, who other than myself would be constantly looking at my pedals?) So here's my updated pedalboard:

Frankly speaking, now my board looks so much neater than the previous one but if I were to get another pedal, the arrangement will mess up again. Enjoy the neatness while you still can. I really like how the Boss pedals are all side by side. This is version 1.3!!!

Now for my pedal order, I have placed the noise gate just after my dirty pedals because I don't want the noise gate to clamp the signals of my delays and reverbs. You can actually see the pedal order just by the colour of my patch cables (Thank God for colourful patch cables). 

I have also tested the pedal out and it works awesome. There are 3 different options of noise for me to clamp. Most of the time I find myself switching to "Full" because of the fuzzy lows coming from the dirty pedals. The gate colour will turn yellow if the noise gate is clamping all the noise, and when I play something, the yellow will turn off, signalling that I am playing something. Quite cool! 😎

Here's a little something I whipped up just now (for those who can't view the video directly from here, you can click on the title of the video for the link):

Hillsong United - Hosanna

Well, I did say I am gonna record more videos this holiday... But unfortunately, I got into an accident that ended up with 5 stitches in my right hand. I will not go into the details of the accident nor will I share pictures of it (because it's gruesome). So for the past 2 weeks, I haven't been able to strum my guitar without hurting so I totally didn't do any music. Well until today of course. 

The wound has healed tremendously (Praise God!) and I'm slowly returning to my guitar-playing! Yay! The next few pedals I have in mind (Well don't blame my GAS again, I've got one more power output left so how can I see it go to waste?) are the MXR Ditto Looper, the MXR Boost/Line Driver and the TC Electronics Polytuner, and if possible after all these, swap out my DD-3 with an MXR Carbon Copy Delay (but this is another story). 💸

Thank you once again for reaching the end of my post. God bless!

Edwin Ang

25th September 2016

Tags: PBv1.30

Update as of 22nd February 2017: MXR Smart Gate is no longer with me. It has been sold for $80.